Just Posted: Sony NEX-7 pre-production samples gallery

Just Posted: Sony NEX-7 pre-production samples gallery. We've been shooting at the press launch of Sony's latest cameras, affording us a chance to shoot with a pre-production NEX-7. We've put together a samples gallery in a variety of lighting conditions, giving an idea of what the camera will be capable of. We've also tried its sweep-panorama mode in circumstances where conventional panorama shooting would have been challenging. We'll be adding to the gallery over the coming days.

Samples gallery

There are 20 images in the samples gallery. Please do not reproduce any of these images on a website or any newsletter / magazine without prior permission (see our copyright page). We make the originals available for private users to download to their own machines for personal examination or printing (in conjunction with this review), we do so in good faith, please don't abuse it.

Unless otherwise noted images taken with no particular
settings at full resolution. Because our review images are now hosted on the 'galleries' section of dpreview.com, you can enjoy all of the new galleries functionality when browsing these samples.

If you download the samples and open in Photoshop, then look at the File Info (camera data tab), you can see that all of the hot air balloon shots and the landscapes seen from the balloon as well as the sunset shot are all with a 24mm 1.8 lens--that's the Zeiss glass.

I would like to see how the Nex-7 compares under similar shot conditions.

My overall feeling of this gallery is that all the Nex-7 shots are all a bit soft - I'd love to rule out the lenses in this gallery from the sensor equation. Can this sensor deliver 24MP? - I am certainly not looking at 24MP shots from what I can see (a sort of ghosting around every pixel). Maybe it is as others point out a jpg artifact or the lenses in use.

:D Yes, but grain on 50-100 ISO film doesnt kill colors. DR? Dunno, its not much but its enough for pretty much anything that would sane person used Velvia for. Film actually has kinda ok DR, if you got good scanner and some PP skills.

Otherwise, I guess this poor results of NEX-7 are due bad JPEG engine. Ive took a look on A77 RAWs and they look quite ok, so this wont be much worse, just JPEG engine of Sony is tragedy.

Well Im looking to upgrade from D200 Nikon and to be honest I'm fed up with all the heavy equipment I tend to lag around. Having recently bought the NEX3, with 16mm and 18-55mm lens it has rejuvenated my walkabout photography, and produces images as good as my D200. Im always sceptical about the increased pixel count and have been impressed by the new censors that shoot in low light at high ISO... Looking at the samples I agree another set of images showing 200, 400 and 800 iso capability would be nice to see, but having used the NEX3 realising there is a special need for a viewfinder this NEX7 has got a very large tick against it... In my experience so far I cannot fault this new concept of camera, Im looking forward to running my own tests (before buying), at a forth coming event. I think Sony have pushed the boundaries out and will continue to do so, which is all for the good of all us photographers...

The difference between the 2 seems to be in the order of half a stop. You might not like the pre production jpeg engines, in RAW there doesn't seem to be much between them. Nothing like your comments would suggest.

Well mescalamba you certainly know how to open a hornets nest it's the same sensor and looking at the images supplied by dpreview they are very good and no doubt with all of us a little tinkering in post processing - as we all do! will only add to the final image and print... I think this camera is going to set the standard for all the othe major companies to aspire to... Please don't bring Leica and fujix100 into the argument - one is far too expensive and doesn't produce the qaulity that's it's film predecessors did the other is a fixed lens retro copy to mind a bit of a posers camera...

Heh, I agree about X100. Not much about M9. Take a look on FM forums in Alt gear section and theres thread full of M9 photos.. especially photos from guy with nickname "denoir" are very interesting. :)

NEX-7 wont beat NEX-5N in SNR or DR. You will see that later. Sure those DPreview results are poor due JPEG engine, and pretty bad lens, but its still 24 mpix APS-C, which at current state of technology simply cant match previous generation of APS-C. It will be ok camera, maybe great from ergonomic point of view, but not much from sensor side of things..

What with the free balloon trips, the seaside excursions, free lunches etc, and all the other stuff we don't see in front of the camera, I commend DPReview for remaining neutral. It would be so easy to tilt the reviews in a favourable direction; it's a natural human instinct to not want to appear ungrateful, and of course the flow of free balloon trips etc can always be turned off. And there are other sites who will be more than willing to bend the truth in exchange for free lunches etc, who will thrive if they do so. Yet DPReview keeps an objective tone, so well done.

Sony made no mistake when shooting a promo for the WX9 aboard sailboats racing off Cape Town. Who wouldn't like to be invited?

Do Mr. Bloom or other camera "celebrities" pay "out of pocket" to test cameras in Hawaii or wherever? Who underwrites all the "assignments" that result in photos or video with no other ostentible commercial aim? I suppose if someone fries an egg, it couid be qualified as "cooking instruction video."

The pic of the bike flat tire, or the bum on the park bench, can't complete. But, hey, maybe that's my bike, or maybe that bum's last mistake was to squander the rent check on a new camera!

That would be a great web site: "Unhappy camera reviews." You could concentrate on cameras that you hate, and just publish pictures of people who hate their job. I bet Ricoh would sponsor it just to tick people off.

I would like to see more "mid ISO" shots in all the sample galleries. ISOs between 400 and 1250 of low contrast scenes with fine details. Thus far most of the shots in most galleries are either ISO 100/200, or high ISO (1600+) with scenes that do not have much detail. Thus the interesting part is masked out. The ISO100 is always great and of ISO1600+ nobody expects exceptional detail and color differentiation. I'm looking for really clean ISO 800 in a crop camera and I suspect that's still not available (depending on personal expectations of clean-ness, of course).

I'm not sure if I'm missing something here ( I probably am), but would't the noisiness be offset if you took photos at a lower resolution setting in-camera, say, 16mp (resolution of Nex-5N)?

Or, alternatively, would the fact that there would be pixel overlapping mean that there would be distortions, if decreasing to anything larger than quarter the pixel count (to c. 6mp, half the pixels in each dimension), which would screw with the image really badly when viewed at 1:1, on the pixel level?

That doesn't make sense. If you have the camera set to take lower res, then the active area in the sensor is reduced? Not sure I follow your logic. Surely the active area of the sensor (the area the light falls on) will be the same, but there will be, say in the case of a 6mpx setting in a 24mpx camera, for simplicity's sake, a 2x2 area from which the imaging engine can take an average. Each 2x2 pixel area would be roughly as large as a pixel from a full-frame 8mpx camera, doesn't that scream "high image quality and noiselessness" to you?

Or do you mean that at lower resolutions, the camera is instructing the sensor to take light data from fewer pixels into account? That would save on processing power (whether in-camera or in-computer) but it would be the same size file and the quality would be worse.

Some cameras use pixel binning, some don't. Cameras that employ the method can combine adjacent pixels to make a lower resolution picture with less noise. The cameras without the feature just use image compression, which reduces noise at the cost of detail. http://learn.hamamatsu.com/articles/binning.html

I think if they had averaging of adjacent pixels to create a lower resolution image, they would claim it as a feature, like Fuji does with EXR cameras. Since they didn't mention it, it seems safe to assume that their lower resolution modes are like most cameras: simply throwing away pixels.

Low Budget Dave,Thanks for the constructive comment and the link. I had a quick look through the page, and it more or less sums up what I was trying to say. Interesting that not all cameras do this.

Michael Barkowski,Regarding the probability that, had Sony developed this for NEX-7, they would have emphasised its inclusion a la Fuji, it certainly sounds plausible.

I suppose the best way to go about creating an ultra-low noise lo-res image from NEX-7 would be: working from the 24.3MP raw file, and developing to JPEG so it's exactly half the number of pixels in each dimension (ending up with c. 6MP JPEG. Quite lo-res, so wouldn't need much JPEG compression, result: few compresson artifacts).

I take it that, through that method, the image noise would be greatly reduced as all available data would be taken from the APS-C sensor (assuming the RAW>JPEG processing engine performed some description of pixel binning, which I take it is a sound assumption)

AFAIK, an adapter for a manual rangefinder lens would not couple the lens's aperture lever to the camera in any way, so you would not be able to use all exposure modes, plus unless you're shooting wide open you will have a hard time even doing manual focus because it would be like focusing with depth-of-field preview on - the lens is stopped down during composition and focusing. Pentax's support of it's own legacy manual glass is far superior because of this.

What is the issue with M43 sensor and legacy glass? Do you mean the 2x as opposed to 1.5x crop? If so then it is an issue for both sensors and always has been in my opinion long before cameras like these came out.

When d-slrs first came out you lost all the wide-angles until makers started producing lenses designed for aps-c. The fact a 20mm legacy lens is 30mm equivalent f.o.v on a Nex or 40mm f.o.v on a M43 camera is a moot point. You still lost the 20mm f.o.v on both and I don't think you will find any rectilinear legacy 12mm or 10mm Leica lens which is what you need to get the f.o.v back.

For longer lenses where on m43 a 50mm becomes 100 f.o.v that is more useful but full frame lenses on aps-c have never scaled well to traditional focal lengths as 50 goes to 75, 85 to 127 and 100 to 150 and so on.

These shots looks very nice, but I think 24mpx is hampering it a bit. I love the body, but from the preliminary comparisons I have seen between the NEX-5n vs the NEX-7 the 5n seems to be a bit better. Now only if Sony could bring out an NEX-7 but with the sensor of the NEX-5n, a lower price, and some zoom lenses more akin to the Panasonic X lenses, I think I would sell my G2 for it.

Sony crammed too many pixels into an aps-c sensor, too many artifacts present in high iso pictures, and the noise reduction algorithm is smearing fine detail. The quality of Canon T2i photos with its 18-55mm lens + 18mp aps-c sensor clearly trumps that of Sony with its 18-55mm lens +24mp aps-c sensor.And the Canon combo is about $600 less than the Sony combo. Is the Sony combo worth the $600 premium? I don't think so.

You can't be really this dumb? The Nex photo is taken in much much darker (lower-light) situation. Look at the shutter speed and F-stop of Nex-7 lamp shot vs your T2i shot.

It's not even close.

In any case, Canon is 4 years behind in sensor technology. They haven't yet caught up to Sony's 12 MP CMOS sensor (such as in D90). This new sensor (without the pellicle mirror) will score at D7000/K-5 level (at least)

People pay 6x as much for a Leica M9-P that can only get to ISO 2500, and the in-camera JPEG engine leaves a bit to be desired. These high-ISO shots look way better. Keeping in mind that this is pre-production, in-camera, yada, yada, yada, the NEX-7 looks to be a highly credible street shooter. Plus at 24 megapixels, this camera has encroached into medium format digital resolutions. I AM NOT saying this is as good as MFD! But, when viewing images at this resolution, pixel peeping does not cut it. Print the image big (20x30 minimum) to see how good it really is.

Very nice but I'd like to see this with a better lens. 24mp aps-c will favor lenses that can deliver sharp images at wider apertures. Small aperture softening (diffraction) will be quite apparent. I noticed softening with my old 6mp SLR when shooting smaller than f/8, so this camera will really show it.

The photos are amazing given the size of the camera. I was wondering when Sony would start to pass up Canon in sensor quality. That day appears to have arrived. Canon had a big head start, but Sony is a much bigger company.

Samples are good. But I don't see all 24Mpx there. All the leaves are blurry mass, for example. I really think that 16 Mpx on APS-C is enough and everything more - just adds blurry pixels. 24Mpx are good for FullFrame.

not agreeing (can say that way?)i do think is too much Mpx - i 'ld rather enjoy (even more) improvements dealing with low lightconditions and finer detail - sample 4 is crazy though. BUT who prints photos bigger than A3nowadays? and if you interested in big prints or mind-blowing resolution this "creature" is probablynot for U. anyways, when U downscale the photos, specially at high isos, they look very fine,better than canon 7d i.e. (jpeg 6400)

on the other hand i couldn't be more in tune with hammerheadfistpunch's comment<Typical Sony look; rich and saturated but lacking authenticity.>the light must have been very well spilled over the sensor... nevertheless i perceive it as something... like if seeing through a contrasty plastic foil/wrap. i have sony and nikon.

bet video would be SUPERBand raws mandatory (for raising back to life those very nice pics U all make :D)finally - in nex series a body with - nice design; my taste 'course.however NOT a camera i'ld buy

Things look really good at ISO 100. By ISO 400 it looks like the typical point and shoot what with all the NR and detail smoothing. Might make a nice bright light or studio camera or a really expensive and much larger replacement for an ultra compact megazoom.

I have to disagree. Sample 16 is at 6400 and the color is excellent. At 3200, sample 13 is has very good color, and only suffers from compression noise. Compare to the Panasonic G3, where the color is already flat at 1600. Sample 18 is at 16000, and is better than a Canon T3 at 6400

Picked up a NEX C-3 on clearance to test out before investing in the NEX system. Very unimpressed after 2 weeks with the kit zoom. Pixel peep all you want at high ISO samples, until Sony offers up some lenses that are up to the task these newer bodies are just a waste of money IMO.

I see only one good lens in their line-up and that is the Zeiss 24/1.8.

But it's so appealing that i might even consider a NEX-7 just for the awesome combo with that lens, and hope for the best. I bet the Zeiss will sell well so most likely there'll be more sooner or later.

Sony make the best APSC sensors in the world, but not the best lenses or it seems the best Jpeg engines. I am far from "wowed" by the results in the gallery for the price- not a lot of these images are at f4 but still lack sharpness. DR is difficult to judge but colour rendition and gradation / tonal depth seems nothing to write home about so far.

Well, ISO 6400 indeed doesn't look good in darkness - but what ISO 6400 ever did?There is even some noise at ISO 100 visible on dark parts on sample 4 when zoomed in. I know the sensor can do a lot better. Guess the JPG engine/denoising algorithm is not the greatest.

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